Oh Håkan You Old Showoff!

It's been suggested many times - at this site and others and at times in rather immodest terms - that Swedish state prosecutor Håkan Roswall is exceptionally incompetent when it comes to IT. But no one could possibly have been ready for his bewildering performance in the first two days of the trial of The Pirate Bay. Already by early afternoon on day one he was blowing people's minds.

Click Click Click

It may be illegal to provide a live video feed from inside a Swedish courtroom but audio feeds are totally OK. And so after lunch on day one listeners to the live audio - for several minutes - could hear little other than what sounded like mouse clicks.

It was Håkan Roswall trying to get his PowerPoint presentation to start up.

After several minutes of this embarrassing nonsense the judge ordered him to move on - and to stick to his paper evidence in the future.

Megabytes and Megabits

Day Two

It's been leaked to this site that the prosecutor's case included a number of laughable technical gaffes about how BitTorrent actually works. It's also been leaked Bram Cohen had partaken of this information and agreed Roswall was way off the mark.

It was further leaked a visit by Cohen had been discussed. But it doesn't seem to be needed now. Fredrik Neij took the stand to set the record straight. And this in turn led to Roswall suddenly having to concede half of his prosecution points.

After three years of preparations.

'This is a sensation', said defence solicitor Per Samuelson. 'It's not every day you win half your case in less than two days. And it's obvious prosecutor Roswall was affected by what we said yesterday. My clients are way ahead of the police on this one. The police still don't really understand how BitTorrent works.'

A good tip: as soon as the police figure it out they should let Håkan Roswall know. Maybe take him out on the town for a cup of coffee and explain it to him. Slowly. And in monosyllabic words. And with big coloured diagrams.